I have been developing online education programs since 1995. I believe in the power of online education. But there are a lot of different models of online education and not all of them work. You'll get a sense of what I believe in and believe is important as you read this blog.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Discovery at TxDLA

TxDLA held its annual conference in Galveston the last week in March. We started another round of the Online Certificate Program with a pre-conference session. There were almost a dozen sessions during the conference that touched on accessibility issues, including mine. (slides below)

Most of the sessions on accessibility were very good. "Most" means that there was one that didn't meet my standards, and where they presented misinformation, which I was forced to correct. It's always hard to know what information, or misinformation, will be presented when one is reviewing conference session proposals.

On the topic of misinformation, I was told by one university administrator that the institutional lawyer had taken the position, and told the administration, there was no reason to make courses accessible unless and until a student with a disability, approved by the Disability Services Office, was present in a course. That might be accurate for a face-to-face course without any digital content (that would mean without a digital syllabus, digital resources, and especially links to websites that students are expected to explore as out-of-class activities).

Unfortunately I'm not surprised by the guidance offered by the institution's lawyer. Unless an institution's lawyer is current on disability issues, especially the recent online consent decrees and findings by DoJ and OCR, there is a good chance they'll provide inaccurate guidance.

2 comments:

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Raymond Rose

About Me

My major immediate focus is advocacy for accessibility in blended and online learning and websites.
I've been involved in online education since the mid '90s when I first began defining and building a method of creating online learning communities online. I helped envision, create, and administer the first virtual high school in the country.
I had been a pioneer in the use of computers in education and raised concerns about equity in technology use early in the education technology movement.
I work with college and university programs, policy-makers, and leaders in online learning from non-profit organizations and institutions. I have helped shape the nature of e-learning efforts in the country.